As you like it'
by AnnMore
Summary: What didn't happen, often matters as much, and hurts more.
1. Chapter 1

He was in the fifth grade, Erin was a newcomer to the forth and a sheer catastrophe for him. She owned the same red hair, or even worse: the carrot-red wisps which highlighted his own misfortune in a most miserable way. An accomplice to the crime of being a pale red-haired kid under the hot Californian sun, easily spotted on the huge schoolyard. All he could do was to avoid her, which was, of course, impossible. The bullies he had somehow shaken off, would now let Erin have it all, and there was a moment he had to choose sides. That he chose hers, was probably the bravest thing he ever did: seeing her home, carrying her schoolbag, holding her cold fingers, mostly in complete silence. They exchanged no more than hundred words during that single year she stayed in their school. Her parents moved around a lot, and the skinny aloof kid had been to quite a number of schools and schoolyards with very few friends. They would hang around together, a couple of infant angels, unassailable in their vulnerability. Did they have anything else in common, beside the essential fact of not fitting in, feeling a monster? He didn't know. When she, or rather her folks moved again, just before the summer vacation, he felt emptied and something else, something he couldn't yet name.

Years later August wondered what eventually became of her, and - secretly - what shade she grew into. Their reddish tint was of the kind 'take it or leave it': plenty of redheads were as ugly as hell, but if you got luck, you had those precious silky locks you'd love to lose your hand in. _This _luck he did have, as well as that of the matching pallid handsomeness; ridiculously much in his life he owed to this accidental set of genetic features. The easy going glimmer he outwardly displayed, his merciless wit, mockery nonchalance attracted women. Eventually, they backed off upon finding out there was more behind it. His frenzy, his ruthless candour about himself they couldn't bear any better than his frankness towards them. Chris, Christine Kim, was an exception. It was because, generally, she wasn't afraid of things which made sudden noises or movements - her own explanation. Indeed this came from a woman who never made a big fuss of a mouse in her kitchen. They had met in the college. Over more than twenty years, she had been: his girlfriend, his would-be wife; his worst enemy; his lover; his best friend. His guardian angel.

She never really asked him what exactly happened four years ago now. She did listen whenever words came out. Back then, he felt as if he had been living at 150 miles an hour, and couldn't handle the world at its normal speed. There was this huge sense of relief he first mistook for freedom. He was merely weightless though, caught in a free fall. Chris caught him up and pulled him together, something she had done before, with mixed success.

And Stanley Nozick, the oldest and saddest of all his college friends, thought he could use an extracurricular instructor of Writing for his English department at his City College. This was the closest he ever got to feel a fraud. But, let's face it, he was a brilliant one, and, in some, not so rare cases, this could do even better than the real deal. Teaching people how to write, anyone?

Yet more and more often, as he lay down at night, slept or walked with his eyes wide shut, he could hear things set in motion, getting nearer and louder. Now he had enough time to look at them closely, get hold of them, discern their density and purpose. And, if he had it right and was very very patient, they would fall in place and turn into words and phrases. Some of this was worth looking at twice. It had been a while since he felt this kind of certainty. Ten, fifteen years? Since _'Accidentally on Purpose', _his only - now faded - claim for immortality. It had been a while for a lot of things. Poetry, Chris, New York.

In the beginning, he stayed at Chris's place in New York with no definite plans for the future, slept a lot, read her post-its with instructions for food, waited for her to come back. Chris was engaged in a huge project for her advertisment company and had little time. In short, he was some kind of a housecat forfeiting his freedom for some food and love - and he rather preferred it this way. From time to time they would go out to a restaurant, and eventually make love afterwards, something they hadn't done for a long time, and now were hungry for. He rediscovered her body which had never carried a child, small-boned and fragile, the petite girl-like body of his first woman. In a way, it was making love to the past.

He found himself stranded in some kind of a time loop, strangely detached from the past half of his life and indiferent to the years coming. Which, in Chris' opinion, was merely an indication of a 'good old mid-life crisis'. _'Just because you had a thing with a girl, you hopeless romantic_,' she'd add. _'I didn't have 'a thing' with the girl_,' he'd snap out. _'You, wussy,'_ she'd answer teasingly. _'So you think I wouldn't have this so-called mid-life crisis if I had slept with with the girl?'_ - _'You would have had the girl, my dear little August. And the mid-life crisis, most probably,' - 'You're not helping, Chris,'_ August would groan, prostrated on the couch. He didn't mind the banter, aware that ridiculing most serious problems, to Chris, was a part of solving them. - _'Are you going to take another teaching job? Suspending someone is not taking away the licence, I suppose,'_ she'd continue. - _'Look, if you're about to kick me out of your place, please don't beat about the bush.'_ Chris would take in his irritation with that savvy smile of an elder sister he knew so well. In retrospect, when it didn't actually matter any more, August realized she had always been some sort of an elder sibling or a friend to him. This was the reason their adult relationship could not last, yet formed a sound enough basis for an adult friendship. In a way, Chris served as a 'reality check' for him. With her, he felt an urge to assess very objectively all the events that eventually let his life split into two parts. It was the the only way to glue the loose ends back together. Facts, facts and nothing else.

August Dimitri, an English teacher, left the Upton Sinclair High in Chicago, Illinois, or was subtly prompted to leave after an alleged relationship between him and Grace Manning, a senior year student, became the talk of the town. Eventually, the whole _affaire scandaleuse _would get him suspended for the rest of the semester by the educational board, _with _pay. Not that it mattered. He was not expected to come back, anyway.

The facts said nothing, actually. They seemed to suggest something like an abuse of power by a sexually frustarted adult, or an emotional manipulation by a precociously mature teenager. Regular pulp fiction stuff. None of this was true, if only technically speaking.

August Dimitri had not slept with Grace Manning. He had not kissed her. She kissed _him_, once, or rather pressed her lips against his for a moment too short, actually, to be a kiss, and long enough to realize he did not want her to stop. But she withdrew herself, and gone was she. Leaving him gruesomely alone, like the ancient king who won his crucial battle, but lost all his troops.

The next thing he remembered was washing dishes mindlessly, with an idiotic thoroughness. His mind kept re-running the scene, suggesting alternate endings, where he reacted on the level of his male instinct: seized her shoulders, let her grey coat glide on the floor, took her face into his hands, claimed her soft mouth, all of her entirely for himself. He imagined how patient, how attentive, how self-denying he would have been for what he assumed was her first time. A pleasure almost non-sexual, the familiar pleasure of being there for Grace, with Grace at the moment she discovered something through him, _with _him. They had had such moments before, enjoyed them; why not now?

The adrenaline rush was over; a minute later he already despised himself for falling pray to middle-aged man's phantasies. So that's how you become a middle-aged man?, he thought. You start to mind your phantasies. 'Young man's phantasies' sounds just so damn innocent.


	2. Chapter 2

_She looks at him, she sees through his verbal masquerade. She is serious when everybody's laughing, and he cannot hide. She figures him out, cracks the code, reveals the connection. She is ruthless, and she's got everything right. Here it is: your soulmate lives in the mind of a teenage girl, which is as far as light years away from you. She looks at you, her hands neatly behind her back, grown-up lips, unbearably young, smiling and waiting, as if wrapping your arms around her could bridge this distance. So easy to do. But he can't, and there are __gestures_, _glances, words __like an old pain stuck in your bones, awake at all the wrong moments._

* * *

He was her teacher, and Grace was his special student, and she knew it very well. Of course, he had had a few before, in his English class, people who could write, some who still did it, and quite successfully. They kept in touch more or less regularly, something he especially cherished. A special teacher's special privilege. Why was she different?

Maybe she was, or maybe it was him who was tired to be the same.

He was misled by the appearaces first. Grace was impulsive, outspoken, very much engaged, very good at the game all teenagers play. Except she wasn't. Perhaps she was too serious a player, too strenuous, too much attached to the rules, constantly missing the moments they were to change. A bit of a tomboy, broad-shouldered, she probably envied some other girls in her class, their effortless femininity. What is it, being 'subtle', 'sensitive', 'complicated'? He felt, with an uninvited tenderness, how all of this was nearly as much a mystery to her as to him, an adult, a man. He remembered how it feels to know so much and still lack some basic knowledge everyone else seemed to share without even thinking. It was more than possessing a different or a more exhaustive collection of facts. Something else. On the one hand, she was an exemplary teenage girl, loud, bratty. Not a day older than her sixteen or seventeen, and in some ways even younger. On the other, there was something in her, mature and accomplished, far greater than her adolescent self, outgrowing her, seeking its way out. August was fascinated by how she was both at the same time, a child with a mature grip of the complexity of things, an adult with that pristine eagerness of a child. _ The gift of Grace. _He liked the sound of it, the truthfulness, the strengh. The gift of being one, wholesome, pure. Just like a deep underground source he discovered. For his own benefit, as it appeared later.

It turned out to be another 'ugly duckling' story, and August soon found himself being some sort of a guide through the muddy waters, - a character missing from the original fairy-tale, though. The ugly duckling ended up as a beautiful swan, the moral of the story being: true swans make it to the happy end, provided you've got the right genes. Grace had. So, the real question was, did Grace really need _him_? After all, she was doing just fine. She fought her sibling wars bravely, collected her A's with ease, and her family, newly-wed and hectic as it was, was warm and supporting, too. They could certainly afford a daughter in a college and would probably not even mind her wandering some less-traditional life paths afterwards. After all, she was a well-adjusted teenager with normal growing pains and quite extraordinary skills to beat them. She was a girl who could take care of herself. And she did it so well that everybody forgot to appreciate that. Everybody, except him. It would be his task, one of them.

And the eyes. It was the first thing August saw about her, before he noticed anything else. Hers were lonely eyes. And again, why did it take a cynical forty-year-old man to spot the loneliness of a girl who could-do-it-all-right and knew-it-all? He knew where it was coming from, had been there himself. This was something _they_ shared without thinking. The exasperating awareness that the world is incomprehensible and yet full of knowledge, so you can either step aside and let it all go, or you can try to retrieve, to save as much as possible. And to be the first one to do so. It was a lonely pursuit.

He wrote of Erin - or some reincarnation of her - in different periods of his life. Every time he kept thinking of some gut reaction breaking through when you run into someone of your own sort - same hair, same loneliness, same reaction to pain. _You shall take care of your own sort, and damned if you don't_. And you do it unknowingly, instinctively, accidentally, but in fact on purpose: if you stick together, you are more likely to survive. It might as well be love, if you give it enough time and place, but in most cases you don't, and you always have good reasons.

It was not his intention to have 'real' love poetry in 'Accidentally on Purpose', except when it - love - sneaked into some his most daring pieces through the back door of his mind, as if to confirm the _pointe_ of the title. It fitted well under the heading: things which happen accidentally on purpose.

Meanwhile, he had already grown a solid _professional_ knowledge about human souls: some general truths discovered by someone else long ago, without any direct impact on one's - his own - life. He himself didn't discover, he told about discoveries, if need be, with a true passion. He was being a teacher. A good one.


	3. Chapter 3

He loves all of them, the ones who are there and now, even those whom he won't remember. All of them together more than someone in particular. He loves to be a cool, unorthodox teacher and an unbiased friend, loves to be loved for that. So, 16-year-olds appreciate he is not embarrassed by the idea of his pupils being interested in or actually having sex. He takes it as a matter of fact, his smile witnesses of comradery and shared understanding. He notes for himself that it is sometimes easier to discuss daylight truths when you don't dismiss the dark, unspeakable ones.

He is the one to understand, to show understanding - a sympathetic adult, well-placed to stand by a teenager with less evident life issues. A budding writer's talent, for example, or certain side-effects of a high IQ. More so, it is his immediate responsibility as a teacher. OK, a teacher in a middle-class high school in a Chicago residential area. In the South Side you had to be for the crude evidencies of life, where 'to have or not to have' was not a choice. In the fifteen years of his career, he was never confronted with the unrelenting basics of teacher's existence, with elementary discipline being the only realistic goal. The Upton Sinclair's High school was his third, after two other 'good' schools on the North Shore. No reason to complain, he can afford much more freedom of action..

So, he knows that Grace Manning needs more challenge than she needs support: Grace has enough self-discipline to work herself through the new material independently, without losing her way. In fact, she bites herself into it, and sometimes she is too uncompromising. Warren Boyde is another one like her, an introspective boy with old-man's eyes, yet he gives the impression of being perfectly self-sufficient, in contrast to Grace who seems to literary absorb things within her reach. This kind of self-discipline is a problem to some boys and their 'leader', Tad, at pains to reconcile his natural intelligence with his reputation of a cool bad ass. Or take Katie Singer, who ceases to pay attention as the school-year progresses, with no apparent reasons. Or the lovely Synthia he likes to look at, and the mystery of her sunny smile and unexpected melancholy in her journal entries. Or the frail and breakable Jesse Samler, Grace's younger step-sister, who seems to awaken a protective instinct in everyone, including himself. He has another task here: to learn them some survival strategies, provide them with reality-shaping, sense-making instruments. And to persuade them that the discussion of imaginary places and dead poets is a perfect way of doing it.

Meanwhile, he insists on being called Mr. Dimitri, with good reasons. Being a friend _and _Mr. Dimitri means: trust, confidence, but no intimacy, no familiarity. It works. His irony, jeering, however friendly, also creates some distance; there is something opaque in his attitude from time to time.

'You are so accessible that it looks more like a trap,' said Chris once, almost with envy, just before they separated. 'I get inside you, and I'm completely lost, again.' He looked up with eyes, bland with exhaustion and booze, thinking his own, as always. Around that time, the things he was constantly thinking of were, in order of frequency: 'The Tauron letters' he was working on, purely on autopilot; that he was going crazy; that he was driving Chris crazy; that he should move and get a real job, and not a temporary contract this time. He passed a state-licencing exam for a teaching certificate in Illinois, Chicago, where his sister lived. They were friends as children, as teenagers. He hoped they would be meeting more, but it didn't happen. He rented a house with a small garden. Quit smoking. Reduced meat meals to once a week, acquired a healthy addiction to whole-wheat crackers and cheese, and always took care to have some at home. And buying a Honda Civic Hybrid was definitely his best shot at saving the planet, althought not quite a saver in itself. He avoided to think about his concern with sustainable life style in any symbolical terms. He had a healthy interest in women, too, but saw no one on regular basis. He did see Chris regularly, all the way from New York, wondering why she kept coming.

And he enjoyed school: less free time, more satisfaction than he ever expected. His 'sixth sense', as he called it, was still there: half automatically, he registered some shards of reality, utterances, images, felt something was underway. It was the impatience, the urgency to get it captured, retained, written down which was gone. Writing, for him, was an ultimate case of emergency. Otherwise it's preposterous and manieristic, like wearing sunglasses for the reasons other than protect your eyes from the burning sun. Yet he still published things, increasingly reviews and criticism, got a taste for it. In certain circles, he was a known name, relished by a success of years ago. In fact, if asked whether he was happy, he wouldn't be able to name one thing menacing or tormenting him at this moment of his life. Of course, there was nobody close enough to ask it, and Chris didn't pose such stupid questions.

Grace knew little of this, and she didn't know the context. His personal life was unfamiliar to her, his life is general, his thoughts, his motives. She didn't care about his benevolent pedagogical intentions, his good-humoured concern. To some degree, she did, of course, it was good for her own writing. But she couldn't care less about the conflictlessness, the serenity he was now living with, his new armistice with the world. She was a schoolgirl with a crush on her English teacher, and in this regard she was no different from any other sixteen-year-old girl with a crush. She wanted him to know that they had much in common, that she understood him. She had recognized him as a familiar face in a crowd, and all the rest was merely details. She kept confronting him with new evidences, piercing him with inexorable brown eyes, knowing all the answers in the class, sneering at those who didn't, speaking in an adult manner, trying to impress him.

Till he could barely suppress the urge to brush those stupid little girl's hairpins out of her hair, push her against the wall and shut her full-lipped snooty mouth the way she wanted him to. To give her a formal confirmation that she was right, by kissing her. He didn't dare after all, but she did. Because this is how it works, and it was ridiculous to think the rules of the game would be changed in their 'special' case.

Nevertheless, he could swear her eyes were first, sad and lonely: maybe it was the song she was singing, maybe his crazy thought that he knew what she saw in the darkness of the stage. He is sure that the eyes and what they saw was what really mattered. And all the rest was a side effect, be it an inevitable one.


	4. Chapter 4

He had a heap of journals on the table before him. As always, the wrap told quite a lot about the owners, no less than the content: the color of the covers, whether they were neat and proper, or second-hand, with the used pages torn out; not always a boys-girls' thing, he knew. Some had mottos. '_Si non e vero, e ben trovato_.' If it is not true, it is well conceived. Tad Casari. As true for God as for your journal entries, I assume. Well done, Tad, and thanks for the warning. Tad presented him with a cheerful commentar on his life, a mock voice-over as in movies and tv-series. As always, there were several journals he held apart. Tad's was one of them, as well as that of Ward and of Synthia; Grace's, too, mostly because of the subject she chose. Family breakfasts and family dinners, parents and children coming and going, stepparents and stepchildren, annoyance seething right under everyone's skin. Her tone was hesitating though, as if she wasn't sure what her story was about, and where it was going to. August thought of 'Uncle Vania', _'People dine, simply dine, and at that moment their happiness is decided or their lives shattered.' _Thanks, Tad, quotes are a sticky thing. It was too early for Chekhov, this early in the semester, but he thought of using the quote in the lesson, as he further spoke of Emmerson and Thoreau, their journals, the purpose of observation of daily life, and introspection. Some ten students took Senior AP English this year, an advanced course in English Literature and Composition to prepare themselves for the college. This included a great deal of reading, and no less of writing. The journal assignment he gave to his students was some sort of an all-round source for ideas, prompts, story starters, a way of easing into a writing habit. The class was not meant as a creative writing workshop _pur sang_, but, as a rule, there were students who benefited from it this way.

He was satisfied with the lesson plan, it was worked out well, with a logical introduction and conclusion.

The next day, in the lesson, his plans almost fell through. due to Grace.

'It's fine. It's nice,' the girl with chestnut hair said, with - in his eyes - misplaced resuluteness. He pitched up. Keeping journals - 'nice'?

'I am sorry, I thought you said 'nice'? This was even worse than yawning, which was the reason he picked on her in the first place.

'I did say 'nice',' she was aware she had blundered out, but wasn't going to admit it, as was evident from the stubborn expression on her face.

'I wouldn't want to misquote you, or anything.' He was giving her the last chance.

'I said 'nice'.' Her harsh tone did it. He didn't remember the last time he was so annoyed and amused, which was, in him, a dangerous combination.

'Nice? Nice! Let me see. Whatever shall I do today? I know. I shall write my boring old journal to be ever so nice.' He sat down on the bank next to hers, the class laughed, and Grace gave him an embarassed and contemptuos smile. The class was enjoying the show, and it was obvious that public humiliation was what Grace Manning deserved, deserved rightfully, and now was reaping what she had sown. The usual disadvantage of being a good student, someone all teachers could rely upon - this much about her he had already picked up in the teachers' room.

It was the platitude he scorned, of course. Platitudes and yawning, wasn't it his quixotic task to combat them? _There is nothing more awful, insulting and depressing than banality, _to quote Chekhov again. But he was also taken aback a bit, surprised. 'Nice' wasn't her word, she lacked the stiffling enamel of niceness, its bloodless optimism. As far as he could see, nothing about her herself nor what he read in her journal could be simply called 'nice.' He had the impression that something was misunderstood here, but it was unclear what exactly and by whom.

What he didn't know yet, was that Grace nearly always meant what she said (not quite the same thing as to blurt out what you have in mind, although she regularly did both). She sought him up in the classroom the following day, her head proudly hoisted, her eyes determined; she came to claim justice, it couldn't have been more obvious. He smiled in himself. As Grace spoke, it began to dawn upon him that she must have somehow missed the difference between her personal diary and his journal assignment. To her, 'keeping journals' was fine and nice, but nothing to make such a big fuss about, and definitely she couldn't help that her life was no more interesting than it was.

Unsure what to make of this, he went on with his correction work, not looking up. She continued:

'You obviously don't think I'm being honest enough, or something,'

He asked, stunned and amused: 'Honest enough? What's... what's enough?'

'Honest _enough'_ was, in her mind, '_completely_ honest,' and Grace couldn't believe she was the only person in the class who wasn't being _that_ honest. 'I mean...' Embarassed, she shifted her gaze, shrugged. 'You know what I mean.'

He wanted to laugh, but was, in fact, too astonished. She meant: dirty little secrets, personal unburdenings nobody was supposed to know, and now he claimed to. Did she really imagine him sniffling in the students' journals for intimate details and getting disappointed when he found none?

For a moment, he hesitated; then he reached out for the journals in his drawer and picked out Grace's, as if to visualize the problem. He didn't want to embarass her, not again, with a recital from a textbook. Yet it was obvious they had to start over from the very beginning: he or she, who, on and off, writes a line or two in a diary, and he or she who takes up the daily habit of observation and introspection, are actually two different persons doing two very different things. He tried again:

'Who calls you Gracie?'

'What? My mother, sometimes, but -'

'Wel, why are you letting her come to class? Why are you letting her write your journal?' _Gr__acie_, mama's little girl, and he didn't like her at all. He said, with emphasis: 'I want to hear from _Grace_.' He believed _Grace _was there, but how to get through to her, how to get past _Gracie_? 'Not that _Gracie _isn't_... _I mean, she is probably a perfectly decent person, but is she _you?_ _Auggie_ Myers plays keyboard on the new Dylan album, and he is amazing, but I am _August_.' Gracie, Auggie. _Diminutive: a grammatical form denoting smallness, familiarity, affection, triviality. _It was all OK, for diaries, shrimp salads and grandmothers. But not for him, and not for his Creative Writing class. Will she get it?

No, one shot too far. Looking straight at him, she said with the tone of _It's very interesting, but let's get to bussiness_:'OK. I just don't think it's _fair - _' Scoffing at her in front of the whole class. He laughed - sure, Grace, I am not exactly making your life easier, but, honestly, who is? - and agreed, readily: 'It isn't! It _is__n't_ fair! Whom you love, whom you hate, who changes your life...None of this is fair. Why don't you write about that?' Too easy an excuse for the painfull scene and pretty nonchalant towards someone less resilient, less a stayer than Grace. But this girl could stand a good deal, no doubt about that, and if she also was as smart as assumed and as he himself, despite everything, tended to believe - all the better. He didn't need to know every embarrassing detail of her private life, and he certainly could do nothing with a glossed-over version of it. He was asking her to think of her little daily epiphanies - her very own moments of truth, about Life - with a capital L. 'What would happen if you said what you're most afraid to say to the person you're most afraid to say it to?' - he hinted, and to such questions she had to find an answer, truthfull and, who knows, completely unfair. She listened, for the first time. He won. At once, her eyes lost their hostile expression, looked serious now, softer. He concluded, just as serious: 'Just don't clean it up, don't make it presentable. Don't be _Gracie_. Be in a state of Grace. Because it's what Grace means. Grace is about what's sacred. And that's the _truth_.' He found himself standing behind the desk with the journal in his hand, gave it back to Grace. She left, and she was no longer angry.

Without noticing it himself, he started to whistle, then leaned back against the chair, joined his hands behind his head. _There are no uninteresting lives, only uninteresting biographers_, he could have said, too. Was he right about this girl, after all?


	5. Chapter 5

His next lesson - English for the juniors - happened on a beautiful sunny day, one of the season's last. Indian summer at its glorious best, promising more than it could give. The class gave in to it, and he himself ended up sitting on his desk, in the warmth of the sun, with a happy and stupid smile on his face. Saved by the bell, at last. He started to pack his papers reluctantly, at his ease, trying to forget he was almost too late for the faculty meeting.

Grace entered the classroom, excited and gleaming. The difference with their last meeting was overwhelming. She spoke hastily and without introduction, as if she had brought him some long-awaited - and joyous - news: 'Mr. Dimitri. I tried it. What you said. You know, about saying what you're most afraid to say to the person you're most afraid to say it to.'  
'I said that?' It took him a second to remember what she was talking about.  
'Yeah.' Grace literally beamed.  
'Oh? Hmm. Good.' OK, she did it again. He smiled, amazed, amused. It looked like his words had been followed with the rigorousness he never intended, as it were a formal advice.  
'Anyway, there's this person who I guess I was trying _not_ to write about.' A boy, no doubt about that. He put his finger to his lips with a humouristic dismay: 'Uh uh uh. No names!'  
'No. I know. It's just this person is pretty much the most embarrassing person I could ever pick. To write about.' Embarassing guys are just so much more inspiring than nice ones. Unfair, but true. 'Sounds perfect,' he said.  
'Mr. Dimitri.' She looked at him, impatient, eager for both his answers and for his questions. She wanted to ask and to tell. What a shame he had to go. 'I must away, fair Grace.'

'Oh. Okay.' Grace was dissappointed, of course. He paused at the doorway, an obvious hint, but Grace stayed inside. A bit plump, big-boned, though athletic: wide hips and shoulders, a slim waist. Most probably she did some kind of sports: she was a centre forward on the girls' soccer team, he learned later. It was easy to imagine her running all out, kicking and screaming, completely lost in the game. What caught the attention, were her dark vivid eyes, smooth pale skin and impeccably regular features, as if carved out in marble, only brisk and lively. And she had the most beautiful lips he had ever seen. _Ripe, ready to be reaped_, were the words which came to his mind, althought normally he would abhor such a cliche.

Now, with a plain green sweater on, a dingy schoolbag over her shoulders, big brown eyes, she reminded him of a young deer cub, awkward, enthusiast and curious. Full of beginner's courage. Making a beginner's mistake. Missing the point. 'You know whom I think about a lot?' Grace spread her arms questioningly. 'Proust. Proust and Emily Dickinson. I mean, they, were so scared they never even left their rooms. You don't have to become the bravest person who ever lived.' He turned out lights. 'Just the bravest writer.'

He knew Grace would look up Dickinson and Proust to see he was joking, of course, but just a little bit. Emily Dickinson and Marcel Proust were two introvert people who eschewed public life and did not pursue their - forbidden - loves. He wasn't sure if Grace could appreciate Dickinson's cryptic, sublimated sensuality, or Proust with his swanky manierisms. As authors, however, they were no less audacious than Rimbaud or Whitman with their soulburn lives.

And he thought of that strange kind of life beyond the 'real' life, be it seclusive or tumultous. The life beyond good and bad endings, where victories and failures - even your own - count as much when it comes to the truth. Where you listen to the cool businesslike voice calculating if your personal meltdown is good enough for a good story.

Grace let everything get too close to her skin; she wanted to win too much. Don't you? he asked himself. Hm. A clear-cut defeat would do, too. Something. Anything.

* * *

He found the journal on his desk, on the top of the heap of old LP's. Absent-mindedly, he leaned over the desk, opened the first page with one hand, a tuna sandwich in the other.

_**The fearless Ms Dickinson**_

_I see this woman sitting at her writing desk, unmoving, statuesque. On the pictures she has a lovely face with high eyebrows and an unassuming knot of dark hair. She has this condescending, self-assured look. I am pretty sure she has pronounced opinions. __However, I don't think she ever gave her school master an opportunity to test the virtues of corporal punishment. A lecture and a quick put-down? More like it.__ No, she did learn her manners at her girls' school in Amherst, even though she didn't use them wel, at least not for the right purpose. Emily Dickinson was never married. _

_Over the fence - Strawberries - grow - / Over the fence -  
_

_I could climb - if I tried, I know - / Berries are nice!_

_ But - if I stained my Apron - / God could certainly scold! _

_Oh, dear, - I guess if he were a Boy - / He'd - climb - if He could!_

_Emily Dickinson never said what she was most afraid to say to the person she was most afraid to say it to. __She was accustomed to shove her heart back in a sleeve, as it were a handkerchief to pick up discreetly when it falls on the floor. She undoubtfully had her reasons. And her journal. I am not sure I could be like her. I don't know what takes more courage, saying or not saying things._

Rubbing his forehead, he took his pen and wrote in the margin: '_Good. Use your experiences, your emotions. Just __remember what I've told you: you don't need to be actually indignated to render indignation properly.__ Use what you already have, use imagination. Keep distance.'_

And grinned. And he who thought he was forgiven.


	6. Chapter 6

The principal Conway distrusted him, if only on basis of his shoulder-long red hair, untucked shirts and disconcertingly flawless behaviour; or simply because of his indifference to the court intrigues. She still distrusted him when she heard he didn't mind to take the lead over the drama club for this school year and warned that 'no extra funds are available, in case you would be planning something extraordinary.' She meant something Ms. Pratt - on maternity leave and, hopefully, in happy ignorance - wouldn't approve of. He reassured her that he would be more than happy to follow Ms. Pratt's choise for Shakespeare, 'As You Like It.'

It was true. The drama club was one of the first things he visited in his new school and was pleasantly surprised to find probably the best school theater he ever had at his disposal. Indeed, from Ron, the janitor, he learned a number of district public schools made use of the stage and the costumes, so he'd better took care to book his own rehearsals in advance. Chatting up janitors and cleaning ladies was one of his simple tricks to get things done at the very last moment when so much depends on someone's willingness to stay up or give the keys. A teacher distrusted by the maintenance personnel would be truly helpless, like a Cinderella without her little mice friends.

He ran with his hand through the costumes and was utterly charmed by some of them, presumably inherited over from the last year's 'The Glass Menagerie.' His face assumed an aloof dreamy expression, as he was immediately struck by the kind of nostalgy one can only feel towards something one has never really known. The Doris Day's and Bing Crosby's celluloid world which didn't pretend to be real and and, as such, was all the more convincing. The way 'The Phantom of the Opera' was way more convincing, moving and 'real' than reality tv. His collection of musicals was quite impressive and, for some strange reason, occasionally confusing to his visitors.

It was already clear he would go for something grand, glittery, 'form above content', light-footed, all in the 30's style. A musical. As conventional as _Romeo and Juliet_ remade into _West Side Story._ Or _Hamlet _into _The Lion King_. Where was the time he chose for 'Our Town' just because of its frugal concept: minimum of scenery, set and props?_  
_

That Grace turned up for the auditions, didn't surprise him much. And it was hardly surprising, Alexa, the set manager and Grace's classmate, obligingly told him with her flat voice, as they were running through the list. Grace had the leads in almost all school plays last year and the year before that. 'She's got a photographic memory', said Alexa. 'Memorizes large pieces of text just like that.' Actually, she didn't come to the audition like everybody else, no, she came to claim her rightful place under the spotlights. He immediately felt a slight annoyance combined with an amused curiosity, which had in the mean time become the usual ingredients of his attitude towards Grace. In the lesson a day before, she showed herself very well prepared, focused and gave not a single chance to anyone else in the class.

Now, Grace ascended the stage, in one of her plain simple blouses, serious and concentrated as if she was about to take part in a spelling contest.

'I know her!' he exclaimed ironically, jumping up from his seat immediately, where he had been half-lying, half-waiting for the past hour with one leg on the table before him. Ajay, a junior boy had just given his own version of the 'All the world's a stage' speech which was so compellingly bad that it became good again.

'Hi,' Grace said.

'Did you prepare anything?' he asked teasingly.

'No. You said we shouldn't.' He had asked to come unprepared and act 'spontaneously', as his main concern was simply to see whether a candidate felt comfortable on the stage in the first place, and then, eventually, whether he or she could carry a certain role.

'Are you sure you didn't memorize Rosalind's epilogue? he asked, remembering what Alexa had said.

'I read it a few times. Is that a crime?' she riposted.

''In some countries, it is'. He didn't give her the epilogue, but a random scene he picked up from the desk and handed it over to her, introducing it with Silvius' words: _'My errand is to you, fair youth. My gentle Phoebe did bid me give you this..._' Act four, scene three.' The scene, where Silvius, the shepherd, commends Rosalind/Ganimede a letter from Silvius' reluctant lover Phoebe, whose authorship Rosalind - mistakenly - comes to doubt. He returned to his desk, ironically raising - washing - his hands in innocence: _'Pardon me, I am but a guiltless messenger'_. And prepared to watch with a greedy interest.

Grace took off with aplombe, immediately assuming the right attitude and intonation, ably deploying the rugged, harsh timbre of her low voice. And she barely consulted her text on paper:

_'Patience herself would startle at this letter and play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all. She says I am not fair, that I lack manners. She calls me proud, and that she could not love me were man as rare as phoenix. 'Ode my will, her love is not the hare that I do hunt? Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well, this is a letter of your own._' Fully 'in caracter', she returned him the 'letter' with an angry, contemptuos gesture.

Delighted, he played along and served her Silvius' next lines: _'I protest. I know not the contents. Phoebe did write it_.' And was hit so by hard her swift retort, that he suddenly felt a purely physical need to stand up, stretch his shoulders and sway back and forth, as if to better absorb the blow:

_'Come, come, you are a fool, and turned into the extremity of love. __I saw her hand. She has a leathern hand, a freestone-colored hand. I verily did think that her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hand- but that's no matter. I say she never did invent this letter... _

She was so good. She was..._absolutely fabulous_. She had obviously learned Rosalind's lines pretty much by heart, and he wouldn't be surprised if the whole play were already safely stored in her pretty, stubborn head. She played hard, left nothing to chance and made the best Rosalind, hands down. So why suddenly this irrittation? It was just so smooth. Too smooth. Too easy. Correction - too easy for Grace. She had done it before. And before. And before. She could do it with her eyes closed. He was pretty sure she didn't even consider the possibility of not getting the gold - not getting the role.

_...This is a man's invention, and his_... !

He interrupted her more abruptly, actually, than he intended, leaving her baffled: 'Thank you, Grace. Very nice. And thank you, everyone, for indulging me'. He was now eager to proceed to the Part II as quickly as possible.

'Mr. Dimitri?'

'Yes Alexa?' he replied, still unexplainably irritated.

'There is one more person. She signed up late.'

'Swell. Where is she?' he asked.

'Jessie Sammler, for the role of Phoebe.'

A girl stood up from a seat somewhere behind them and walked to the stage, thin, bleak and delicate - a translucent apparition emerging from the dark. Jessie read awkwardly and unsure, althought it was probabaly close to the character of the tormented Phoebe, torn between her hopeless love for Ganimedes - actually a girl, Rosalind, - and the conventional safety of Silvius' embraces. The audience started to whisper. Hating to lose time, he interrupted Jesse, mildly: 'Very good. So, that's it, Alexa?' 'Yes,' Alexa confirmed. OK, let's drop the bomb.


	7. Chapter 7

'Great! Nobody leave,' he commanded. And to Jesse: 'Stay right there'. He gathered some sheets and adressed his unsuspecting audience. 'Okay, this is what I was thinking... Here is my idea. In addition to all the songs which already are in this wonderful play, I would like to put in some folk music! Yep, the music of weird old America. How great is that?' he exclaimed cheerfully, perfectly aware the cheerfulness was all his. He looked out on blank or puzzled faces, whereas Grace's face stiffened with indignation. Alexa schrugged and seemed otherwise unconcerned. 'Okay. Well, trust me, it's at least really really good'. It was true, he had done it before. Shakespeare and folk music: it sounded insane, but it worked wonderfully well, unless you took it too serious. '_As you like it' _was an unpretentious - _tongue-in-cheek_ - pastoral comedy, extolling simple country life and simple, unrestrained feelings. In short, it was more or less predestined to go with folk songs of weird old America. What you got, was some sort of mild camp resulting into the seriousness of a second order, the one which lurks behind irony. And he could use Donovan's 'Under the Greenwood Tree', finally. He passed out sheets with text and music.

Ajay, sitting next to Grace, was genuinely confused: 'Mr. Dimitri? Nobody told us we would have to sing.'

'I know. I'm telling you now!' He wasn't really improvising on the spot, the sheets laid prepared on the desk and would have been distributed anyway - to be taken home for practice. Except now he felt a curious urge to find out how far he could go in enforcing _spontaneity_.

Grace, starting to panic: 'Do we have to sing today? Like, right now?'

'Yes. We're going to go backwards through the order.' He looked at Grace neutrally, passed her the sheets and turned to Jessie who stood completey lost on the stage: 'You're the first.'

'You want me to sing?' - 'That's right!' Jessie was clearly taken aback, but, unlike the rest, not at all horrified by the idea. And a few moments later it became clear why.

'I don't think I know any of these...Wait... I think, I guess, I kind of know this,' she said, still hesitating.

'Just do a little bit. Whatever you're comfortable with.' Jesse took a moment, and when she started, every sign of hesitation disappeared at once. A simple wonder happened, her voice - her soul - was pure, clear and strong, it freed itself from its fragile flesh and, fearless, filled the stage. For a moment, it was Jessie who held everyone's full attention, just like Grace did a few moments ago, except for Grace it was clearly a norm, and for Jessie - a tremendous achievement. For a moment, the _real _Jessie stood in the highlights, and her fears were locked away behind the scenes, and not vice versa - as usual.

If you miss the train I'm on, you will know that I am gone. You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles. A hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles. You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles...A silence.

'I love this. I love it!' But, again, nobody shared his opinion. Chiefly because it was the only thing that could be said.

A disgruntled Cynthia McCormick immediately raised her hand: 'Mr. Dimitri?'

'Yes, Cynthia?'

'I really have to say, I think this is totally unfair that we have to do this...'

'How would you like to do it?'

Cynthia hesitated a second, and Grace took over, eagerly and fervently: 'We should be given time to practice. Because it's a little strange to assume that people would be comfortable just singing - ' she threw her hand up fiercely, pointing towards Jessie, - 'like that.' The gesture held so much disdain that he suspected there was something else here, between these two, besides the _normal _'artistic' rivalry.

'Obviously you feel strongly about this?' he asked softly.

'Well...' She looked around. 'I think we all do.' The heads nodded, although he was quite sure that, while everyone saw it as a game, only Grace had come with an explicite intention to win. Grace had the highest stakes and she refused to play unless she was in full control of the situation. _Very well_, he thought and said:

'Fair enough. I'm not a complete sadist. _Yet._ Okay. Those of you who are called back will be required to sing one of those songs. And if you don't get called back, you should learn these songs regardless - for your own enrichment, if nothing else.'

The next day, he hanged out the lists with three names for the role of Rosalind: Cynthia McCormic, Grace Manning, Jessie Sammler.


	8. Chapter 8

'So you think she will be willing to do the costumes? Sarah Kontz?' he repeated after Alexa, unable to pull his eyes off the stage, where the assistants were shoving with huge pieces of scenery.

'Yeah. I mean it's her hobby, fashion, and she's done this once or twice before,' Alexa explained dutifully.

He grinned. These were the words he had heard quite a lot from Alexa lately. 'Is there at least someone around here who hasn't done this once or twice before?' After giving his question some thought, she said: 'Jessie. Jessie Samler. She's Grace's step sister, by the way. It's the first time I see her in the drama club.' Aha. A step sister. This explains a lot, he thought in himself.

'And you.' He looked up. Alexa gave him an awkward smile: it was a joke all right. 'I mean, this is your first time... in this school...' He bit on his lip. No, he never felt at his ease with Alexa. Alexa Jagoda was an undeniably attractive, vaguely exotic apparition with a sharp edgy face and unreadable eyes under a huge heap of dark swirling hair. For some reason, she gave the impression of being constantly on her guard. She often frawned and was extremely careful with her word choice. As a set manager, she was indispensable. She was efficient, orderly, obliging, accurate. Frawning, she listened to him, assessed his ideas in terms of feasibility, distributed orders. Despite his decreasingly polite protests, she kept bringing him coffee in an ambitious attempt to break him of the habit of using a thermos. He was shocked to realize Alexa was actually courting him, even more than she was flirting. He had a curious feeling he was a boss to a devoted secretary who took care of his agenda _and_ of all his physical needs. Sleeping with Alexa Jagoda was more or less a part of the package, it felt inevitable and perfectly natural. In reality, he didn't find the situation that amusing. In Alexa's presence he was distressingly aware of his own vulnerability as a single middle-aged man with, at best, a sporadic personal life. Consciously or not, she was pushing the buttons he preferred to keep out of sight. Alexa sitting next to him at the table, anticipating his movements, his words, his wishes, like a skinny pesky cat waiting for her special treat. Most of the time she irritated him. It was too late to get rid of her, and - most importantly - there was no reason, except for his growing urge to shake her up and send her away to play with boys of her own age.

Alexa was a perfect set manager and he couldn't do without her, it was that simple. Like every school year, the moment came when the burden of administrative delays was about to reach the critical mass. And he couldn't afford to loose track of his class work either. There were spoken presentations and tests in his both classes, there were after-class journal discussions in his senior year.

He and Grace discussed 'The fearless Emily Dickinson', the first of her entries all centred around the theme of 'saying or not saying things.' It was a nice and civilized conversation, and he did his best to keep his face straight. Didn't mention the guilt for having cruelly mistreated the best student in the class. Or his tuna landing in a waste basket. He suggested to lend her _'My Life a Loaded Gun__' _by Paula Bennet. Grace said that her preparation for drama club auditions was taking too much time. And met his look without batting an eyelid. By that time, he could no longer deny that he and Grace Manning were involved into some kind of a - _pedagogically_ motivated - rope-pulling. But it was what he did with some of his students, following his pedagogical intuition more then pedagogical prescriptions.

Recently, he was utterly bemused to run into Tad, nervously pacing to and fro in the backstage right before his audition. A high school superman with cold feet, and he looked on with compassion and just a little tad of his unholy ginger glee, surprised he still could feel some. He knew that all high school supermen turned human - nice sensitive guys, actually - in private conversations, and Tad was no exception. Tad pulled off a perfectly believable Orlando, but remained Tad for the rest of the time, a good-natured dodger and a blotcher, with the 'goody Mr. Dimitri' siding with him. There was as yet no urgent need to convert Tad, though. And Warren Boyd had a rock solid conviction he was a far better observer of life than a participant to it. 'Less broken vases', he smirked, thankful that 'Mr. Dimitri' smirked back, not trying to get things around. After all, all he could have said, came down to the fact that Warren was only seventeen, and that he, 'Mr. Dimitri' was seventeen, too, and survived it. And that it turns out to be OK, breaking vases from time to time, and it can even be fun.

Unvoluntarily he thought of Grace, of how she totally lacked such scruples and how obstacles made her shift to a higher gear and give even more of herself. And how he enjoyed watching this from the front row, or actually, from his director's chair. Clashing Jessie with Grace - for the role of Rosalind - was a _- pedagogical - _hunch. It was good for Jesse to believe that she could more. And it was time for _Grace _to learn to deal with it. The silver-voiced kid was perfect as Phebe, anyway.

Considering all this, he expected to be surprised. And still, he was surprised.


	9. Chapter 9

_Whenever he thought he had a lead, Grace was one step ahead, one step ahead._

_'... For I must tell you friendly in your ear, sell you when you can; you are not for all markets. Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer. Foul is most foul to be a scoffer. So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare thee well.'_

Grace was very good again, brought her lines with a strong steady voice, bowed to the public with the ironical flair her role required. But he saw her nervosity and hurried to put her at ease: 'I have to say, I enjoyed that very much, Grace.'

'Thank you,' Grace said, visibly relieved.

'How, let's hear your song. Whenever you're ready.'

Her singing voice was very much like her 'acting' voice - a bit hoarse, broken in. She sang like someone who wouldn't do it spontaneously and used a harmonica as a voice tuner. Looked clumsy and nervous. And then he forgot it all. It was impossible to say what exactly happened, - she turned her head, a shadow fell over her face? - but suddenly there was an expression in her eyes he hadn't seen before. The eyes got dark and pensive and longing: this girl was alone, this girl was underway, this girl had not yet come home. For a moment, her fears and her doubts stood in the highlights and her indomitable, invincible self was banished to the backstage. It was a mirror image of her stepsister who had just performed on the same stage, and was strong and self-assured as never before.

Her voice went down once, but she resumed immediately and brought the song to a successful end.

Grace nodded and rushed outside before he could say anything more than 'thanks'. He turned to Alexa to ask who was coming next, sighed and announced a break instead. Alexa dissappeared immediately, for a quick dose of nicotine, he assumed. He sighted again. There was a vending machine outside in the hall, and he really could use some water.

'Alexa!' he called out at the exit, although he was pretty sure where Alexa wasn't there. But Grace was, just as he had expected. She jumped up, alarmed. The dramatic combination of her ivory skin and sumptuous crimson lips stroke him, once again. Just like on the stage, a few moments ago. He wondered how she would she would look like over a couple of years, when the sophisticated, mature beauty would be matched by the experience.

She leaned against the wall again, trying really hard to act nonchalant: 'Hi.' He played along and gave her a radiant smile: 'Oh hi! So, who thought you had such a wonderful voice?' To his relief, he discovered a few dollar bills in his pocket. 'Yes, I know,' she smiled back, still looking like she wanted to squirm herself into the wall and disappear. He said: 'What an audition, you should be proud.'

'Thank you.' Grace watched him trying to feed dollars to the stupid machine which kept declining his offerings. Sitting on his haunches, he looked up: 'But I guess you'll have a lot of competition?'

'Yes, I guess I will.' _Too much heartiness, Grace_. He cut it short: 'And Jessie Sammler is your stepsister?'

'Yeah.' She turned her head away from him so abruptly that he thought he heard her neck crack. 'And you guys get along?' He felt so tired. Jesus, he had the right to clear a few things out before he'd put these two cats in the same cage.

'Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know...' Her eyes assured him he knew something he didn't. It's just amazing how many people admitted they knew things they didn't. Not him. He said: 'No. What?'

'It can be awkward.' He chuckled: 'This must be really awkward, both up for the same part?'

'I'm fine with it.' _And I'm my grandmother's shrimp salad._ Out loud, he said: 'Really? And..and if she gets the role?'

'That's ok. I mean, she is good. She is really...sensitive. Which makes her a good actress.' The word _'sensitive', _on her lips, sounded and _looked _like an euphemism for an incurable disease. _So, your stepsister is nuts, Grace, and you're so kind to warn me?_ He made a step towards her. 'What do you mean?'

In fact, he already knew enough. What followed, was a formality, filling in names. He watched her closely with his eyes narrowed. No pun, no escape.

'She is...sensitive. Which is good. ...But it also might make it hard for her.'

'How? What?.. How would it be hard?

'I don't know. Never mind.'

'No, no, no. What?'

'If she got the part, it might be difficult.'

'Why?'

'Because..she's had some problems...'

'What kind of problems?'

'Well, she had an eating disorder last year, it was really tough for her, I just hope it won't be too much pressure.'

He kept looking at her, hesitatingly. To his surprise, he felt fascination. Among other things, and yet. The kind of fascination you feel for a nature force - fire or water - which simply follows its way and goes where it has to. No morals involved.

Alexa came up to them, running, a penetrating smell of tobacco stuck in her clothes. 'I just had to go to my locker,' she explained, short of breath.

'You know you shouldn't smoke, Alexa,' he said, just to say something.

'I know.' Not that he could influence Alexa's preferences that much.

'Bye Grace,' he said at last.

Was it regret, on her face?

It was. It was a passionate repentance of a passionate sinner, since Grace did nothing half-heartedly. She still hoped to be forgiven, pursuing him over the corridor the next day at school, imploring him with her penitent look, assuring him that what she had said about Jessie meant nothing. He was actually surprised how eager he was to _get_ at her. _'Grace, everything means something.'_ His own words kept echoing in his head, and he just couldn't shake off the feeling that he was punishing Grace for something he had done himself.

He called everyone up, to tell the good (or bad) news. It was simple. The role of Orlando went to Tad, and Grace was Rosalind, of course. Tad's posse followed him to crowd the entourage of the brave Orlando. Cynthia McCormack whom he never saw leaving Grace's side, got the part of Celia, Rosalind's devoted cousin. He hadn't any longer thought of Cynthia as Rosalind after he saw Grace's audition. Jessie was Phebe. He kept his initial choices in almost everything, with one exception. Ward, Ward had decided to try out for the role of Jacques, a discontented, melancholy lord, the fact 'Mr. Dimitri' considered it as one of his little victories. He knew Ward fell for the irony of hearing himself recite the lines from scene VII: _'All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players / They have their exits and their entrances...' _Checking the list, he came to the weird conclusion that the relations of the characters for the most part mirrored the actual relations of the players in the real world. As if he attempted a ridiculously literal interpretation of the play. Or as if the_ real world_ was interpreting their lives as some sort of a play_, _which, if anything, meant that the old Will was right. Everything happened accidentally on purpose. It took him a moment to remember where those words came from.

And then, when he arrived in his junior class the same day. Jessie. Jessie at her desk, huge blue eyes, a beautiful vulnerable angel of his junior year, the girl whose voice he had admired so much. Who actually thought she made a fair chance to play Rosalind. She never did. He had never even thought of such a possibility. He looked down to his book. All this time he'd been doing nothing else but educating Grace, punishing Grace, making her understand things. But it was all about Grace, Grace, Grace. And Jessie...He more or less used her.

His guilt was short-living. He knew he did nothing irreparably wrong. It did well to Jessie, to her self-confidence, the euphoria of hope. At the same time Jessie herself was realistic enough to accept she wasn't _the _Rosalind. And yet he was shocked, about himself. As if he had been suffering from selective blindness for quite some time, and never realized it until this very moment.

And it was the moment the things began to accelerate.


	10. Chapter 10

August opened the window, and a heavy swirl of warm air hit his face. No help here, either. The nights were warm and sticky, and he stayed up late, waiting for some freshness and thinking, thinking. He'd feel beaten up at work. Like now. He shook his thermos, only to hear there was no more coffee. Normally, it would mean he was through with his work and could go home. Not today, with the final exams coming and papers being collected and corrected. Beside his part-time teaching assignment, he did administration, with an unrivalled zeal.

A cheerful female face smiled at him through the door. Kathleen, a postgraduate specialized in Wordsworth and co., a good-humoured brunette with a brutal grin. She watched him pull his feet off the desk. 'Care for a drink, Gus?' - Ah...I'm afraid I'm stuck here for a while...for ages, actually. Not tonight. Thanks, anyway,' - OK, maybe next time.' She disappeared, not at all discouraged. He is lame tonight, too lame even for the most stupid jokes, let alone something more serious she might expect from him. But she will wait. Women have always been willing to wait for you, my dear little August. Who said, no messing around at work? You must be kidding.

The phone rang. Stanley Nozick.

'So, what do you think? About the forum, next Tuesday?' his sleepy voice said. Stanley slept very little, indeed, but he didn't _need_ more than that. Sluggishness was his disguise, for both his sharpness and his fragility. August had known him for more than twenty years and was the closest to what you call the 'best friend.'

'Hm.' He had seen the invitation to a forum of English departments, but still hoped to be spared. 'Why me?'

'You need reasons? So old-fashioned. Let's see. Hm. You've got the looks,' Stanley said, imperturbably.

'You little bastard,' he sighed. Stanley was absorbed by South Africa, the apartheid, Coetzee, Antjie Krog, and took the suffering of the world personally. August's task - at least one of the reasons he was hired - was to tackle Stanley's everyday nightmares, such as facing large groups of people, be it faculty meetings, literary matines or fora of English Departments.

'On Tuesday?' he asked, unnecessarily.

'On Tuesday,' confirmed Stanley. 'Wait...Oh I don't know, ask Kathleen. You should at least be glad to visit your alma mater, for God's sake.'

'Alma mater,' the same for both of them, was the NYU. Inattentively, he listened to Stanley's usual phlegmatic digressions into his numerous other anxieties, he chuckled and he laughed. Whom are you kidding, he thought. NYU meant Grace. In 2005, it was virtually - laughing out loud - impossible to disappear if at least five other persons were interested in your whereabouts. And even less possible with the kind of work he was doing. He came across Grace's name in 'West 10th' and other university journals, and in 'Open City,' once; most probably, she majored, or at the very least minored in creative writing. She was good, no, she was in top form, and she was probably happy.

One of his first strolls outside Chris's apartment was to the university campus; it was not that far, he went on foot. He made a full circle around the Washington Square Park, watching young fearless faces who inhabited another world. It was normal, the world - everyone's future world - was being rebuilt here, in places like this, every six years from scratch and taken outside, either to destroy the old one or to sustain it, and both was necessary to keep everything going. August saw familiar places haunted by ghosts only he, - and Stanley, and Chris, - could see.

Especially one old cafe - _the_ arty tent, an early home to Bob Dylan, the Raves, Kool and the Gang - gave him an eerie feeling, being the place he once took Stanley to to meet Chris, at last, and Stanley blushed at the royal calm and beauty of Chris, August hadn't seen Stanley blush before, and it was awkward at first, until they had had their weed, and they became one soul in three bodies, or maybe one body with three souls in it, and they were a _karass, _August said, and Stanley said, Aha, you've read the _Cat's Cradle _I gave you, and Chris said, I was there when the bomb exploded, and she said I love you to August, and she said I love you to Stanley, and it was a perfect piece of_ foma_, or harmless lies, which make your nights tender and your days worth living... _Busy, busy, busy..._

He didn't feel sadness or nostalgia, was too impatient for that now, the old ghosts made place for a new one, the one he was now expecting to meet behind every corner. Could He, would He send Grace to him sometime? He, the great master of _foma_? He struggled to imagine this place without him, but with Grace, it was weird. The same place, two different moments. The circle was complete and they both were in it, but at the opposite sides. and that was what was wrong with all encounters which do take place, but miss each other in time.

Eventually, he'd visit the university many times more. He did not expect to meet Grace, and he didn't.

But it simply couldn't last this way.


	11. Chapter 11

He was not an eunuch and not a fool. He was well aware of the glances. Stealthy, openly daring, jittery. Way too indifferent or too attentive, eyes wide-open, cheeks slightly blushing. Mostly it didn't go further than that: glances, blushing, a religious attendance of his English classes. A few times there would be a girl, world-weary before her time, willing to teach him a few moves, strictly outside the classroom. Blushing in his turn, he irrationally longed for a position in an all boys' school. Not that he was so naive to think it could solve the core problem. Probably he was merely too ignorant to recognize glances from _that _direction and had no reasons to regret this. Not even once he considered to venture out. Sleeping with school girls, so tempting and gratuitous, had something of a free lunch. In the end, it will always cost you more than a lunch with a price tag attached. With _women_, he knew, in a way of speaking, how much it would cost him to get one of them at his restaurant table and into his bed. And how much - approximately - it would cost to them both to walk out of each other's lives, if things went wrong. With a school girl, he would end up trapped.

Embarrasments are easy to remember. He was a starting teacher, her name was Sarah and she was sitting on the window-sill in an empty classroom, her legs - with lovely knee dimples and knee high boots, that's how he saw the dimples - were neatly crossed at ankles. She had no intention to harm him. She would expect absolutely nothing from him. (Only sex, but none of them mentioned the word.) No obligations, no consequences whatsoever. Promise. She shuffled and waited for his reaction. The simplicity and soundness of her logics baffled him. The crazy thing was that he believed her. It was a smart girl, really smart. Not that much into English, - she didn't even sit in his advanced class, - but she was brilliant in math and had a peculiar sort of humor. A year later, she would be already be studying engineering in Georgia Institute of Technology. He wanted her, and she didn't even need to use a fracture of her brain to get that. He looked down. It was an empty room at six o'clock in the afternoon. She had put a tiny lila miniskirt for him; she could keep her boots on. He knew that whatever he said now, in the sense of 'yes' or 'no', would be equally stupid, be it for different reasons. She listened to his answer without stirring. She could understand that, and he thought he heard an ironical respect in her voice. They could be seen and be caught, and she was way too young. It was what he meant, even if he used other - expensive and weighty - words, to mask the embarassment. It was all true, she knew that. It was not the first and not the last time he'd upset women by doing the right thing.

(A year year later, after her class reunion, he would have just enough time to drive her to his house and they would have an hour before she would leave to catch her plane to Atlanta, Georgia, and her boyfriend. This was the day he learned everything about her knee dimples and delayed gratification.)

But there was more than that, more than considerations of ethical and legal character, which were normally speaking _the_ reasons teachers weren't sleeping around with minors. He would be losing more than a job. Of course, he was yet to meet a teacher who wouldn't say the same thing - a good, dedicated teacher. And he was one for sure. But he had also left too much behind to become a _teacher._ He had invested too much to be one. With every year passing by, there was less and less chance he could walk out the life he was having and return to the old one, with Chris, poetry and New York. So, if he did something _that _stupid, he would be starting from all over again.

He did look. It never went further than that. He looked at girls, he had dreams. It was very normal for a man whose job involved, _inter alia,_ discussing _Lolita_ with very young girls, a number of whom nursed an active sexual interest in him. He didn't make a problem of it. He was vaguely aware it would start to be a problem if he started to be anxious about that.

With years, there came an unexpected tenderness which he reluctantly identified as fatherly, or at least fatherlike. It came when he sometimes realized the only way to convey what he exactly meant to the boys and girls in his class, was to make them twenty years older. It was impossible, so he was not angry or impatient with them, or at least tried not to. It was as if those twenty years had been heaping up inside of him to result in a surplus of compassion, and understanding. Tenderness.

He knew he was lucky. He didn't have to go nagging about the mess in the bedroom, gaming, staying up late. He wasn't a parent. He wasn't, and he had got used to this the way one gets used to the absense of the little finger. He wasn't a friend to any of them in his class, either; he wasn't a realistic love interest. A bit of all of this, but not quite. It stopped at a certain moment, when it was time to go home. He was being a teacher. Of course, nobody expected such things from a teacher. But he noticed he had become a teacher _outside_ the classroom, too. As if he didn't go home with the rest of the class. He didn't do the dirty job of parenting, or friendship, or loving.

He had a few good _- real _- friends whom he hadn't seen for years. And in the meantime he associated with other people, collegues who had their own reasons to keep their intimations to themselves. They were good for a drink or two after work. He had known diverse degrees of intimacy with women, which never involv_ed for better or for worse_ and _till death do us part, _not even with Chris. It always stopped as complications began, as if was exempted of the dirty job of living, too.

And Grace was after all the one who put him back with his both feet on the ground. She was real, the first real thing he had had since long.

At the moments he thought it all over again, he knew he _wanted _Grace for himself long before he ever put one possesive eye on her. But it didn't occure to him to look at her this way. Despite her _'beauty like a tightened bow'_ or whatever W.B. Yeats and his collegues had to say about women who were generally not known as nice_._ Maybe beautiful, but not _nice_. Afterwards, it was funny to realize he was just being one of the boys in her class. Grace was too intimidating for them, boys. Probably because of the _'mind That nobleness made simple as a fire.' _You clearly risked a blue eye if you came too close to Grace Manning. Or Helen of Troy.

Grace Manning was mercilessly straightforward. She somehow managed to be both shrewd and childishly naive, often at the same time. Her mind _was_ tenacious, passionate, insatiably curious. She was perfectly capable of following and unraveling any intricate argument, but she refused to accept it unless it actually led to a point which - in her opinion - made sense. He made a sport of outflanking her, making her feel vulnerable and watching how she rebuilds her defending lines. He didn't feel the need to restrain himself as he did with many others. Grace was in his league. Grace was a tough guy. She was a pain in the ass, and she was smart. She was fun.

And, of course, he was missing things again, as usual. For example, when Grace turned out to be a giggly sixteen-year-old teenage girl, crushing on the cutest boy in the class.


	12. Chapter 12

The students were sitting in small groups, scattered all over the stairs in front of the faculty building. They reminded him of a flock of some exotic animals at a watering hole, just before they embark on a trip to more exciting places. '_Savana club,'_ for example. A bald, elegantly dressed man reached out his hand. August vaguely remembered a Wordfest a few years ago, a few drinks too many, the bald cone sheening and wobbling in the neon light, the anxious murmur of voices. The Wordfest far behind them by then. Billy Roger, all right. Somebody had called a taxi. Judging from Billy's bearing, no memories of the WordFest whatsoever had clung to his mind.

They ascended the second floor, to the reception hall. August walked to the tables to get a drink, and when he was back, there was a student talking to Mr. Roger. It was a girl who looked like Grace, but it took him a few seconds to realize it _was _Grace. A young woman, a beautiful one. There was no surprise, or joy. He simply felt tired, as if he was finally about to run a relay race which had been delayed a couple of times. She had a short haircut, and looked very different. Not a bit older, only more mature. The way she could have been in her senior year at school, and wasn't. Mr. Roger gave the girl one of his most lucid smiles, obviously pleased to see her. _They are kids at 17, the girls less so than the boys_, he reminded to himself; _they grow up, and you don't recognize them a few years later when they are still infatuated with being adults_. _Hi Mr. Dimitri, how are you? A proud grin, on equals with the teacher. Oh, it's you, Sylvia, Ronny etc._ Normally, they would never get past _Mr. Dimitri_, feeling strangely awkward, the distance even greater than back in high school. But it was Grace, and it was painful to realize he didn't know how to relate to her. He had missed a few crucial years which possibly taught her more than he did. Who said there was only one special teacher?

He couldn't make himself to pay attention to what was being said, leaned against the window sill, smiling vacantly, watching them talk. Did he ever see her to wear this mask of polite attention so casually, or even the red lip gloss on her lips?. Her profile, her silhouette had become finer and sharper, and now belonged to a young woman, beautiful for the first time of those few, granted to women by the nature unconditionally, without extra pay.

Suddenly, it made him sad: she was more accomplished now, yet not complete; she was yet to change, he no longer.

'August?' Billy called. 'It's Grace Manning here, one of my best students.' It didn't surprise him. He sighed, and said: 'It doesn't surprise me, actually.'

'Oh, you do know her?' Grace gave him an open and friendly smile, his special student, one of them. _They still write me, you know, once in a while, even if they don't write anything else. I've got a drawer full of their kids' photos.'_

'Before you, she was mine. My best student, I mean.'

Roger laughed, so did Grace, and a minute later they were engaged in a nice little conversation people sometimes have, strangers, yet with something very important in common, love for literature, for example. For Emily Dickinson or Zadie Smith if you cared to specify. Grace was working on a paper about Zadie Smith.

When Billy left them to talk to someone else, an uneasy silence fell between them. Grace glanced aside and then back at him; her hand palm kept patting on a table.

'I'm happy to hear you still feel strongly about…things,' he went finally. Grace looked up, bit on her lip, brushed her new hair away from her face. Did she ever wear earrings, he wondered. He lowered his voice, said softly: 'You look great…and grown up,'- 'Oh please, drop it,' – 'What?' – 'You know, this 'proud parent' thing.' August laughed. 'You are right. Sorry.'

He felt like a lousy performer who comes unprepared, messes up with the text, pops up in all the wrong scenes in all the wrong plays, getting involved in nonsensical dialogues all along. What chance did he make to come up with this one perfect line which somehow makes sense of everything? Once in a life-time?

'Do you...do you have a moment? For a drink?'

'


	13. Chapter 13

_So, I've rearranged some words and commas and I've split two chapters into four shorter ones. Cosmetical surgery, you may say:)_ So far...

* * *

'OK. But not now. I can't. I...I have to go now,' she hates how harsh and grave her voice sometimes sounds, as if stating a verdict.

'Oh.'

It is the way he smiles, mildly and absent-mindedly, the ascetic sobriety of his features, as he looks down to his fingers playing with a plastic beaker.

And just half an hour earlier, _'It just so unfair. Not now'. _August Dimitri, laid-back and gracious as ever, crossing the street. His hands shoved carelessly in the pockets of his comfortably rumpled jacket, a heap of red hair burning in the sun. He is the kind of guy who will always look elegant despite of rumpled jackets. He is the king of untucked shirts and dusty shoes. It is the suppleness he moves with, the lazy ease of a dancer. She crouches behind the fat Helen's back, draws her head in like a turtle, till it practically dangles between her knees. _'It is just so unfair.'_

_Grace Manning and the most terrifying fifteen seconds of her life. August Dimitri, engaged in a conversation with Billy Roger aka Papa Doc. He passes by without stirring one single hair on the fat Helen's head. He has always walked as if the whole world laid at his feet, and he didn't even give a damn._ _Grace Manning jumps up, stumbles upon a rucksack, nearly falls; her life consists of stumbling upon things and people. But only people get hurt. She sneeks behind the two to see they climb up the second floor. There is an event going on there, and they are likely to stay. Grace Manning retreats to the lavatory to push her heart back into her chest.  
_

_It is not fair. Ok, stop whining. _They have had that dispute, remember, about what is 'fair' and what is not. Much of the 'fair' stuff was fake; most of what was not fair, was the truth. Find a way to deal with it, _Gracie girl. Fine._

In the bathroom, Grace Manning stares into the mirror until she can't recognize the face in it. She breathes in and out for ten times, something she has learned at drama club in school. Hundreds of times she has seen her face in the mirror like this, in the similar dim light of the make-up room. She inspects herself with an extreme concentration, feeling every muscle on her face relax, the red spots vanish, the tension in the cheekbones go away. She knows her face very well, the part of her appearance she is really confident about. She has learned how to make it 'work' with the right make-up. Lots of practice, peanuts.

She doesn't have her make-up bag at the moment, she remembers. Grace Manning tears a piece of a cleaning napkin off and removes the traces of leaking mascara very carefully; combs her hair as neatly as she could with the fingers. Brushing with her hand over her skirt, she feels something tiny and round in her pocket: a tube of a violently red lipstick. It is warm and sticky. She pulls it open and holds it for a few moments in her hand. Then she paints her lips, carefully and with great precision, goes over the earrings. The overall result is…convincing.

The school play, remember? Her big stupid mouth, and the contempt on his face. _'A real actress would not be afraid to bare her soul on the stage'._ Bullshit. Grace Manning has given a performance which was presentable, decent and _fair_. Hey, isn't a school play about pleasing parents and undercutting stepsisters? Mr. Dimitri, he wants her to show him the _truth_. _What is truth, Gracie? _Never before or after she has seen that much disappointment and contempt in his eyes. And God knows, she'd eventually have him go through worse things than that. But of course, he'd know the _truth_ by then, they both would.

What a shame that the stage is the only place to bare your soul and not suffer the consequences. In their free time all real actresses wear poker faces, like everybody else. Grace Manning wonders if August Dimitri knows _that_. _Let's see. Ladies and gentlemen, as you like it.  
_

The rest is easy. Grace Manning gets to the hall, talks to Billy Roger, her tutor, and August Dimitri, her teacher at high school. '_Yes, I've always had good teachers, Mr. Roger.'_ Papa Doc shines. She's always been an outstanding student. She is eloquent and self-assured. Grace Manning is the queen of self-control. Talking is easy. Noun, verb, adverb, adjective, adjective, adjective, verb, verb, verb. Too many words. _Mr. Dimitri: 'Writing is eliminating, boys and girls, if you want to land a clear message. As true as ever. Hemingway is not dead, he's immortal. And remember: verbal violence is a sign of weakness.' _Bulshit. I don't want my message clear. It isn't. August Dimitri's voice, sensual and ironic, his nonchalant pose. His disturbingly boyish smile popping up on his lips. Women casting lazy uninterested glances, carefully faked. No, Grace Manning is not your rival. She will never be a woman to meet this man by random chance, like you. She will not be dying to run a hand over his hair, if only for one night, like you. It's too late. She will always be a little school girl knocking at her teacher's door to tell him she knew all about him - from a poetry book. The question is: _would_ the woman really know him better than the girl?

Grace Manning wonders. Her way with him was breaking and entering. What in the world gave him the patience? Why did she feel she wasn't unwelcome every time she got in?

She looks at her watch and says:_ 'Look, we could meet at Peet's Coffee? Like at 7 p.m.?_'


	14. Chapter 14

Grace and Tad were circling, almost dansing around each other, cross-firing their lines. Grace's Ganimede was playing a double game. The brave Orlando was not aware that the self-declared connoisseur of women in front of him, was actually Rosalind herself. In Shakespeare's time, the role of Rosalind/Ganimede most probably would have been performed by a male actor, and there were additional subcurrents and inside jokes the modern viewer - or the actor, for the matter - was now completely missing.

Tad was more or less playing himself, running his usual routine of a handsome boy, constantly in trouble despite his noble intentions, breaking the hearts of the local female population with his naive charm. Grace was responding very appropriately.

_- '...Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries his house on his head; a better jointure, I think, than you make a woman. Besides, he brings his destiny with him,'_ declaimed Grace/Ganimede spottingly.

_- 'What's that?' _

_- 'Why horns; which such as you are fan to be beholding to your wives for, but he comes armed in his fortune and prevents the slander of his wife...'_

He watched on, thinking of his ridiculously indiscriminate love for theater. Theater in general, and school theater in particular. He knew that some teachers, in fact, most of them didn't not like wasting their time on something that amateuristic, - and it was exactly what a school drama club was - and he could perfectly understand that. You simply were a 'theater person', or you weren't. There was this complotting, buccaneering, hopping around with a bunch of kids who were all catastrophically neglecting their home work and family obligations in the meantime. A mild form of civil disobedience, and that's how he liked it. When he heard his new school kept a proper _Parent Information Meeting_ about the theatrical activities of their offspring, he felt as if he had become the new king of Barataria, finally. And he had a good team this time.

Nothing and nobody was perfect, though. Of course, there was Alexa. But there were also people who stopped coming; fortunately, there were no important drop-outs. Some people came regularly, but kept forgetting their lines; such as Tad. Others came and knew their lines, but remained unsure and anxious, like Jessie and Warren. And there was Grace, who came regularly and was present everywhere at the same time, knew everyone's lines more or less by heart, and had no fear whatsoever. She ignored Jessie benignly. she inevitably fell out with Alexa on a number of occasions. Pale with rage, Alexa appealed to him to restore order. He interferred with a soothing '_Ladies, ladies'_ and backed up Alexa, as he couldn't afford to compromise the authority of his stage manager. Grace, who was unusually complacent at the time, shrugged and seemed to forget the whole incident right away; Alexa didn't forget anything, or at least he had this impression.

And there moments things were going as it was supposed to, - just like now, - and he was enjoying it.

_- Virtue is no horn-maker, and my Rosalind is virtuous,' _Tad formed 'horns' with his two fingers and pushed them playfully against her forehead, and Grace cracked up._ 'And I am your Rosalind...', _were her last distinguishable words._  
_

He sighed, and commented: _'And that of course where Rosalind begins to giggle uncontrollably.' _Grace protested, rather unconvincingly. It was getting late, so he decided to round up things, after a formal conclusion:

_'Okay, since we've stopped - comments?_

Ajay's hand went up.

_'Yes, Ajay?'_

_'Tad was being the typical player. I mean, Orlando,' _he brought up, approving and reverent_. _It looked like that he would have been as reverent and approving just about anything Tad did, whether he played Orlando or _baseball, _- which Tad did, by the way. Actually, Tad was smart enough to admit he played the latter better than the former. It was rather doubtful Ajay and co. was aware of this_; _as far as _Mr. Dimitri _knew, Tad was never too modest in public. Neither was Grace._  
_

_'What about Rosalind's wear? Alexa?'_

'_It seemed like she lost her wear,' _declared Alexa with cold satisfaction. Alexa never lost her wear._  
_

He exclaimed: _'I hate when that happens!'  
_

Tad's hand shot up.

_'Yes, Tad?'_

_'Yeah, where it says "though he comes slowly," is that like another reference to sex?'_

_'What do you think?_' His eyes intinctively went to Grace. To see he blush like a bride on the eve of her wedding night, Grace who normally was as indulgent as Germaine Greer when it came to sexist remarks. This was the moment he should have put two and two together and asked himself how such a benignness was still compatible with Grace.

_'Dude!'_ Tad high fived with the neighbour, his gang shrieked, laughed, groaned in utmost delight.

_'Good God, it's almost six- !'_

The kids started to gather their bags and papers. He reminded them of the schedules and the _meeting._

He dismissed the rehearsal with the words: _'A huge leap forward, people!'_ and thanked Alexa. Grace lingered behind. He didn't mind; Grace had been terrific, and he liked the idea of a little chat with his leading actress.

_'I'm sorry I laughed, I just-,_' she turned away, and then again to him. _'He was practically - nevermind._' _'He? Who is he? Tad?' _He looked up, seated again with his bag on his knees. Intrigued.

_'He was practically what?'_

_'Nothing. I don't actually mind.'  
_

_'Mind what?'_

_'That he keeps- you know!._' She lowered her voice. _'Flirting. With me.'_ He stared out, not sure what baffled him more - what she just said, or that she said it to _him_. It looked like he himself had been missing quite some subcurrents lately. Especially the ones running right under his nose.

He controlled his thermos, - empty - put it away into his briefcase, anything, just to avoid looking at her.

_'Now you look - shocked, or something.' Oh boy._ He murmured: _'I wake up looking shocked; ignore it'._ Then the whole absurdity of the situation finally got through to him, and as always, it made him feel better. Poor Grace, she definitely didn't expect Mr. Dimitri get so touchy about _flirting_ right after he was so light-hearted about _sex_. He stood up.

_'I've heard of flirting,'_ he said softly, looking straight at her this time, this funny little girl who probably thought life was over right after your twenty fifth birthday. _'Is it not, my dear little August? Shut up, Chris.' _He grabbed his jacket and briefcase.

Grace blushed and went bussinesslike: _'I just didn't want you to think - that I don't take this serious._'

He interrupted her: _'You know, giggling is permitted. In Shakespeare.'_

_'Is it?'_

_'No flirting, though.'_

_'Tell Tad, he's the one who keeps - Oh.'_

She broke off, realizing she was being kidded.

He left, wordering how it was possible such a straightforward person as Grace kept putting him on the wrong track time after time. And he was annoyed by the role Grace seemed to have assigned to him in her 'affair', that of an elderly - sexless - confidante, a Mrs. Penniman.


End file.
